Teaching depends on logic. Now Spelling throws logic to the winds. I tell a child that "cough" is "coff," and logic leads him to suppose that rough is "roff" and "through" is "throff." If I tell him that spelling is important because it shows whence a word is derived, I am bound in honesty to tell him that a matinee is not a "morning performance," that manufactured goods are not "made by hand." Hence I leave Spelling alone.
At school I "learned" Spelling, and I could not spell a word until I commenced to read much. Spelling is of the eye mainly. Every boy can spell "truly" and "obliged" when he leaves school, but ten years later he will probably write "truely" and "oblidged." Why? I think that the explanation lies in the fact that he does not read as a growing youth. Anyway, dictionaries are cheap.
* * *
To-night I sat down on a desk and lit my pipe. Margaret Steel and Lizzie Buchan were tidying up the room. Margaret looked at me thoughtfully for a second.
"Please, sir, why do you smoke?" she said.
"I really don't know, Margaret," I said. "Bad habit, I suppose ... just like writing notes to boys."
She suddenly became feverishly anxious to pick up the stray papers.
"I wonder," I mused, "whether they do it in the same old way. How do they do it, Margaret?" She dived after a piece of paper.
"I used to write them myself," I said. Margaret looked up quickly.
"You!" she gasped.